My husband and I have been looking at new homes recently, and this is pretty accurate of what $249,000 will get you in most Chicago suburbs.
Here is another issue that I ran across while reading Yahoo’s opinion column that concerns giving religious folks an inch and them taking a mile. While I believe in freedom of religion and the first Amendment, I feel like some of these demands are going a bit too far. Should we put a limit on religious customs?
Whole article from USA Today - 6/13/2006
Muslim women in the USA have been asking the public to accommodate their religious beliefs about modesty, a trend that some Muslims worry will provoke a backlash.
In some recent examples:
• In Lincoln Park, Mich., Fitness USA relented when Muslim women demanded that the gym wall off a co-ed aerobic center from their women-only section because men could see them working out.
• In Bridgeview, Ill., a Muslim school says it wants its girls’ basketball team to play road games against non-Muslim schools provided the public schools ban men and teenage boys from the game.
• In North Seattle, Wash., a public pool set up a swim time for Muslim women in which men, even male lifeguards, are banned.
Seems like we now we are not only going to have legal battles with fundie xians, but now are up against fundie Muslims, as well.
In all of the examples, businesses and public facilities were asked to accommodate followers of one interpretation of Islamic law that says the sexes must be separate if women are not covered with headscarves and modest clothing.
“You’re not going to make your American, Christian and Jewish friends to feel comfortable … which in the end could create a dislike for Muslims that is unnatural.”
But other Muslims see the trend as an issue of civil rights.
Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of Muslim Public Affairs Council, says the right to petition for special accommodation based on religious beliefs is protected by the First Amendment.
But in these cases, as I see it, this is forcing people to cater to their religious beliefs in a public domain, which violates the rights of others.
“Whether a woman wants to cover her hair or not is her personal choice,” he says. “As long as it’s not imposed on the rest of society then I don’t see any problem.”
Walid Phares, a professor of Middle East studies at Florida Atlantic University, sees it as an early sign in the USA of a global Islamic movement to pressure Western society into abiding by Islamic laws.
“These demands exist because there is an ideology of a militant movement to slowly but surely demand more,” Phares says. “They will be building on it.”
But Ebrahim Moosa, professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, says the requests are attempts to integrate with U.S. culture. They show “that America can become their home,” he says.
What do you think about this?
UPDATE: .ADDITIONAL LINKS
Hard-liners won battle for Bridgeview mosque
disturbing details about the Bridgeview mosque
The weirdness in this world is endless:"He climbs up trees, behaves like a monkey and is a strict vegetarian, but he is no god and his condition is just a congenital defect," says Bhushan Chakraborty, the local medical officer.
Tucked away in a hamlet in Banarhat, over 400 miles north of Kolkata, the state capital, devotees wait for hours to see or touch Oraon's 13-inch tail, believing that it has healing powers.
Doctors said the "tail" -- made up of some flesh but mostly of dark hair -- was simply a rare physical attribute.
"It is a congenital anomaly, but very rarely do we find such cases," B. Ramana, a Kolkata-based surgeon, told Reuters.
Credit & Copyright: Pete Strasser (Tuscon, Arizona, USA) 
Superstitious craziness is endless! By Megan Goldin Wed Jun 7, 12:38 PM ET
TEL AVIV (Reuters) -
To wear them or not to wear them?
That is the question for ultra-Orthodox Jewish women caught in a dilemma after the wigs that many of them wear to cover their hair under religious modesty regulations were found by rabbinical sages to violate Jewish law.
"It was a big scandal because they found out that the hair that was collected in India was used in rituals for idol worship," said Amir Zahavi, the manager of a wig factory on the edge of Tel Aviv.
Hindu rituals, such as those performed in the temples, are considered sacrilegious under strictly monotheistic Jewish law.
The hair used in such practices certainly can't be used to make wigs that ultra-Orthodox women wear under religious edicts that require all married Jewish women to cover their hair in public or when in the presence of men other than their husbands.
The problem arose about two years ago when Israeli rabbis discovered that hair cut from the heads of Hindu worshipers at Indian temples was being used to manufacture wigs worn by religious Jews.
The discovery about hair used in Hindu rituals caused pandemonium. Rabbinical experts went from wig factory to wig factory in Israel and abroad to ensure that wigs for the ultra-Orthodox market did not include hair from India.
“I'm not a person who feels very friendly toward organized religion. I think people have been brainwashed through the centuries. The churches, particularly the Catholic Church, are patriarchal organizations that have been invested with power for the sake of the people in power, who happen to be men. It breeds corruption. I found going to church every Sunday and on holy days an exercise in extreme boredom. . . .
When I was a kid and misbehaved, my father told me that the boogeyman was going to come up from under the ground somewhere and steal me away to wherever this mystical demon took bad kids who disobeyed their parents. I was a neurotic child, constantly paranoid that an arm would come up out of our lawn and pull me under. While I slept I kept the covers over my head in the dark, afraid that something would reach up from under or behind the bed to get me. I believed creatures like the boogeyman existed because I learned about demons and devils in Sunday school, and my Sunday school teachers and pastors said they were real – these creatures of the night that came to take bad people to hell, or to torment their souls while on earth. This was pure and simple CONTROL BY FEAR. Many xians believe in the existence of demons and the devil as much as they believe in their god. Carl Sagan, in his book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark explains how superstitious humans believe in demons as much as they do their gods:
In Genesis we read of angels who couple with “the daughters of men.” The culture myths of ancient Greece and Rome told of gods appearing to women as bulls or swans or showers of gold and impregnating them. In one early Christian tradition, philosophy derived not of human ingenuity but our of demonic pillow talk – the fallen angels betraying secrets of Heaven to their human consorts. Accounts with similar elements appear in cultures around the world. Parallels to incubi include the Arabian djinn, Greek satyrs, Hindu bhuts, Samoan hotua poro, Celtic dusii, and many others. In an epoch of demon hysteria, it was easy enough to demonize those we feared or hated. So, Merlin was said to have been fathered by an incubus. So were Plato, Alexander the Great, Augustus, and Martin Luther. Occasionally, an entire people were accused by their enemies of having been sired by demons.
So, where did these demons come from? Xians believe their god made everything in the universe. Does this mean that this god made demons? Some people think so. Sagan points out that “in the Talmudic tradition the archetypical succubus was Lilith, whom God made from the dust along with Adam. She was expelled from Eden for insubordination – not to God, but to Adam. Ever since, she spends her nights seducing Adam’s descendents.”
If demons are fallen angels, then why did this god make faulty angels? If he had angels for company in heaven, then why did this god need to create faulty humans? Or is this god just incapable of perfection? Or does he create imperfectly on purpose? Of course, when thinking reasonably, demons are nothing more than figments of human imagination reflecting our own inner fears.
This should prove to be interesting. I would not tune in for Mann Coulter alone, but would for George Carlin. I am sure it will be amusing to see what Carlin has to say to her. Tuesday June 13 3:44 AM ET
"Tonight" host Jay Leno might want to consider wearing referee stripes on Wednesday's show when Ann Coulter and George Carlin are his guests.
Coulter, the acid-tongued conservative with a new book out, and Carlin, the quick-witted, antiestablishment comedian who's in the voice cast for the new animated film "Cars," were booked at separate times for the NBC late-nighter, a spokeswoman said Monday.
Driving Toward a Sun Halo 
Now this is asking a lot. How can you just blankly watch a sporting event without any kind of expression? I don’t care how “holy” a man is, he cannot sit and watch World Cup Soccer or any championship series and not exhibit some kind of emotion! These monks will be screaming and shouting and cheering in the confines of their own minds."It is very difficult to ban them because new technology means the games can be aired live and seen everywhere," he said. "They may watch, but must be calm."
"But if they make noise or cheer as they watch, they will lose their monkhoods," Non Nget told Reuters.
Edge-On Galaxy NGC 5866 
Atheism rises above creeds and puts Humanity upon one plane.
Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
"It seems that Miss Coulter's whole sense of self comes from thinking she is a "hot young babe" who drives, presumably myopic, men wild with a sexual desire so ardent they no longer hear the nonsense she is saying. Goodness me, who would have ever guessed that the Achilles heel for most Republican men would be the sight of pre-operative transsexuals in dresses made for someone 20 years younger?"
I am really going to start looking extra close at everything if money can be made this easily. 
“My respect for the Abrahamic religions went up in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th. The last vestige of respect for the taboo disappeared as I watched the 'Day of Prayer' in Washington Cathedral, where people of mutually incompatible faiths united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place: religion. It is time for people of intellect, as opposed to people of faith, to stand up and say 'Enough!' Let our tribute to the dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe.”
Priests chanted mantras to seal the union, but the snake failed to come out of a nearby ant hill where it lives, the Press Trust of India (PTI) said on Friday.
A brass replica snake stood in for the hesitant groom.
"Though snakes cannot speak nor understand, we communicate in a peculiar way," Das, 30, told the agency.
"Whenever I put milk near the ant hill where the cobra lives, it always comes out to drink.
"I always get to see it every time I go near the ant hill. It has never harmed me," she added.
Villagers welcomed the wedding in the belief it would bring good fortune and laid on a feast for the big day.
Snakes and particularly the King Cobra are venerated in India as religious symbols worn by Lord Shiva, the god of destruction.
Das, from a lower caste, converted to the animal-loving vegetarian Vaishnav sect whose local elders gave her permission to marry the cobra, the world's largest venomous snake that can grow up to five metres.
"I am happy," said her mother Dyuti Bhoi, who has two other daughters and two sons to marry off.
"Bimbala was ill," Bhoi told local OTV channel. "We had no money to treat her. Then she started offering milk to the snake ... she was cured. That made her fall in love."
Das has moved into a hut built close to the ant hill since the wedding.
Earlier this year, a tribal girl was married off to a dog on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. (And I really don't want to know the details about that consummation etiher!)
IC 443: Supernova Remnant and Neutron Star
